Can share your experience on EV car ?
Posted by In_Praise_of_Shadow@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 35 comments
Our house have 2 cars, my wife EV city run around car in which she loves and my ICE petrol hatchback 2017.
My question is should I switch to EV as well, so both cars are EVs or I should change to something like hybrid ?
I don’t do long journey everyday but sometimes go further once every few months to holiday park or airport
International_Body44@reddit
I would personally get an ev.
Consider that newer evs have a good amount of range, for example the Kia ev6 can get upto 361 miles, the BMW i3 coming out this year is meant to have a 500 mile range.
I really doubt your long journeys would be any bother if you picked an ev with a decent range.
p1p68@reddit
We have an mg ev atm but pick up our new kia ev next month, it's range is 388 miles.
Left_Blackberry_4081@reddit
I’ve had an EV now and haven’t needed to use public charging once. I travel 75 miles a day to and from work and just charge it overnight every other day to keep it topped it. We haven’t done any really long trips yet but for us we’d want to stop anyway to eat / use the toilet etc so would just plug it in
Infamous_Side_9827@reddit
I bought an EV recently, I’ll never go back. You won’t need another home charger, I charge my car up once a week to keep in the 20-80 sweet spot: so just alternate. Then you can join EV drivers in laughing at petrol stations.
I’ve done a few long trips. Now, although they say keeping the battery in the 20-80 range is ideal, you can charge to 100. A guy on YouTube put it well: you CAN floor your petrol car from the lights with a squeal of tyres. Should you do that often? No. Will it damage your car? Not really, not if you do it only very occasionally. Same with charging, yes you can charge to 100 and drain to 5, but do it sparingly.
So on one occasion so far, I charged to 95% and at the far end I put an additional 25% in to make sure I got home with plenty of margin. It took 11 minutes, which was just enough time to go to the loo and buy a coffee.
West_Yorkshire@reddit
r/CarTalkUK would be a better place to ask
ashyjay@reddit
This is the better place as you'll get responses from normies, car subs and EV subs you get the haters and the evangelicals, both are terrible people to get opinions from as they don't give nuance.
hhfugrr3@reddit
The evangelicals are really annoying. I once suggested in a tesla sub that the cars should show charging places by default rather than petrol stations. Apparently, I'm an idiot. I don't understand how anything works and there's never a reason to use any charger that isn't the tesla one the car has directed it to even if that adds two hours to your journey 🙄
dbxp@reddit
For the occasional domestic long journey an EV will be fine. If you travel long distance for work or drive over to Europe regularly then a hybrid may make more sense
hhfugrr3@reddit
I do a lot of long journeys in my ev and they're fine. The lengths of the stops have more to do with recharging me than the car so journey times are no different to my old diesel.
ashyjay@reddit
I drove down to Stuttgart in my EX30 which has a maximum real world range of 220 miles, it took 16 hours, and a lot of charging, the drive to the Chunnel took 3 hours and bashed it out without stopping.
their issues arise when you have to make more than 1 or 2 charging stops to reach a destination, as the half hour stops add up which drags the trips out, they are fine for road trips but don't get too deep in to A Better Route PLanner as it can feed anxieties, just let the built in Nav sort out charging.
hhfugrr3@reddit
With 16 hours of driving, I'll be making a lot of stops to charge my batteries nevermind the cars.
dobr_person@reddit
It's fine, just get one with a big enough battery such that in most cases you can go somewhere and back without using a public charger.
One thing to consider is how you will charge two cars. I imagine not an issue if one is just a runaround.
hhfugrr3@reddit
We have two evs and one charger. We just take turns. It's very rare we both need to charge at the same time because her drives to work and drain it and I'll only do a big drive once every couple of weeks.
hhfugrr3@reddit
We've got two evs. I did over 30,000 miles in the first year. It's been from Carlisle to Germany without any issues. There's decent public charging in most places now. Only places that were difficult were north Wales and a lot of northern Scotland. Not been that way for a few years ago may have changed now.
Puzzled-Job9556@reddit
I can do a 200 mile round trip off a single charge. Costs about £4.50 to fully charge whereas that would be £70 in diesel.
budapest_budapest@reddit
I have an electric Corsa and it’s great. I wouldn’t go back to petrol again, both for environmental reasons and because it’s nicer to drive. Easily handles local driving, charging every 2-3 days. On the occasions we do drives long enough to need to use public chargers, they’re roughly the same price as petrol would be. I don’t like sitting in the car for long periods anyway, so stopping to charge isn’t an issue. Some service stations need more chargers installed, but we’ve rarely had an issue finding one.
We’re going down to one car soon and it will be electric. Once a year we do extremely long drives which would need multiple charges (eg Northwest to Cornwall), we’d likely just rent a petrol car for that.
smith9447@reddit
Not an issue, I regularly do long trips through France in my pre-facelift MG5. Real world range about 200-210 miles overall. Charge during wee and coffee stops, never going back to an ICE car.
Opening-Fortune4@reddit
I did a driving holiday from london to Inverness and around Scotland in my EV last year. As long as you get one with reasonable range, of which there are loads, and that charges reasonably quickly (150kw+, again that’s most of them now) there really aren’t any issues. There are tons of chargers now. It’s expensive to charge on a motorway compared with at home but it still compares well to petrol and you hardly ever do it.
RebeccaCheeseburger@reddit
People say this about long journeys but how often do you do a 2+ hour drive and not stop at services for a toilet break or a refreshment, or just to stretch your legs, by the time you’ve done that your car will be charged enough to continue. I’ve never even noticed the difference to be honest!
dobr_person@reddit
I would say it's more the cost of charging in service stations.
With electric cars they are more expensive than ICE, even second hand. You can get a really good ICE car for less than even a basic EV. However this is usually offset by the fuel cost.
If someone has to use public chargers the financial don't always work out. Really depends how regular though. I find my car can get to most places I would go in UK and back with no, or only a small top up. The exceptions are just exceptions so I am ok with that.
ashyjay@reddit
It depends as you need a sub from a charging network to get decent prices, like Ionity is 90p without one but 45p with one, after 2 stops the sub makes it cheaper, and EVs depreciate like lead balloons so you can get a great car for less than the petrol equivalent, but they are still only worth it if you can charge from home to take advantage of EV tariffs to get 4-7p/kWh which makes running costs cheap, as I can do 70 miles for barely £1.50, when the petrol equivalent would be like £10-15.
NekoFever@reddit
Same. Our EV equates to about 3 hours of motorway driving and a rapid charger will fill it back up in about 25 mins. Since we’ve had it (2.5 years), we’ve gone further than the range four times, and it’s made zero difference to our travel plans because we just stop at services, use the toilet, let the dog have a wee, buy something to eat while it charges — which are all things we’d do anyway.
People overthink the 250+ mile journeys that most do once or twice a year and really aren’t any different.
Amazing-Visual-2919@reddit
Surely you've enough experience yourself? The EV is probably 1/10 of the cost of running a petrol.
Unless you're going out of the range of your battery a lot - you'll save money charging an EV at home.
You know your trips. You can do the sums.
Urbanyeti0@reddit
Got an MG5 in 2022, spend 90% of the year driving in and around my county which is absolutely fantastic. Obviously need a home charger, but it means it costs a fraction of running an ICE.
The occasional long journey can be more challenging, depending on where you’re heading. But pop it in cruise control and can get great range even at speed along motorways
Ethel-The-Aardvark@reddit
We've had our Ford Explorer since Easter, it's a 2025 model with extended range, and was a replacement for our trusty old diesel Mondeo. They doesn't seem to get recommended very often but we're very happy with it. Good boot space (although obviously not on the scale of the Mondeo, so no more transporting fridge freezers when our children move house!) enough bells & whistles for us, and lovely to drive. In this weather with a mix of short trips and longer motorway journeys we're getting about 380 miles from a full charge. Will have to wait and see what it goes down to in colder weather.
Koda614@reddit
I’ve got a Hyundai Ioniq 5. No ability to charge at home, but it’s got an 84kWh battery that can give more than 300 real world miles between charges and recharges in 15 minutes so it’s no hassle to live with.
epicmindwarp@reddit
I've never heard anyone say "Can't go to the airport, got an EV."
In fact, I've taken EV Ubers to airports.
For long distance journeys, charging points along the way, or hire an ICE once a year - which would still make it cheaper in the long run.
p1p68@reddit
I've got an ev and do long journeys. The milage range for batteries has come a long way. Long journeys aren't an issue at all.
Tartan_Couch_Potato@reddit
Most people's bladders have less range and EVs do now. I need to stretch and relax after 3 hours.
I don't know how some people are able to drive hours and hours without taking a break.
PsychologySpecific16@reddit
I use an EV to commute. Good tool for the job.
I use ICE for fun.
Caveats. I have a drive to charge and the cars are provided through work.
I will never get rid of my V8. I despise most modern cars and the inteferring tech that goes along with it and I hate touchscreens in cars when a button will do.
2003bluecat@reddit
This is the way.
F-type?
PsychologySpecific16@reddit
1uz Soarer with a TVS1900 strapped to it 😄
2003bluecat@reddit
My wife has an EV, a Volvo XC40 Recharge. The smallest battery one so gets really work of around 240 miles this time of year at mixed use driving, closer to 180 worst case in the winter at motorway speeds.
We’ve had no issues with it. As she does around 20k miles a year it just made sense as that’s a £200 minimum fuel saving compared to her previous car. We’ve done trips around the UK in it including a over 5 hours to St Ives from the West Midlands in Autumn which was no problem, plenty of chargers around now but it does help to do a bit of planning for any long trips. Note you don’t have to, but would rather spend 15 minutes checking out the charging stops than end up in the middle of nowhere with poor food options.
We also hired a Tesla a few years ago to go up to and around Scotland. We didn’t go any further than Loch Long but again had no issues with chargers. I’d say it was easier as the Tesla had more range (it was summer too) and the integrated sat nav works out the charging stops really well.
Long story short, I really like the EV experience. I’m a petrol head by nature, but I just can’t justify the additional overall ownership cost for the kind of petrol car I’d want compared to what an EV will cost.
CriticalCentimeter@reddit
You do you
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